


Green Curry

by FestiveFerret



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Cereal, Get Together, Humour, M/M, POV Tony Stark, Pining, Romance, Senses: Taste, Steve has a weird thing about food, Steve is Stupid Perfect, Thai Food, Tony Likes to Push Buttons, pranks gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 13:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestiveFerret/pseuds/FestiveFerret
Summary: Steve, who was the nicest most generous person in the galaxy and would give you the overly tight shirt off his back - and had done so more than once for Bruce, after a surprise Hulking - got weird about one thing: food.





	Green Curry

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to notebookishtype for the beta!

 

Tony got used to sharing pretty quickly.

Fighting together turned into living together, and living together turned into living on top of each other. Tony had carefully planned out the tower to give everyone a massive apartment of their own. That lasted about a week.

First, Clint moved in with Nat because no two people have ever been more platonically co-dependent in the history of forever. That somehow made it not seem weird when Bruce moved up with Tony, entirely accidentally, because they had a science project brewing in Tony’s living room that needed constant vigilance. Besides, Tony had like ten bedrooms in the penthouse alone. Apparently, that was all the invitation the rest of them needed.

Suddenly the whole team was claiming Tony’s guest rooms as their own, cooking breakfast in his kitchen, and moving all their shit upstairs. It was like living in a super-powered frat house. Albeit, a fourteen million dollar, super-powered frat house, but still. If he found one more goddamn towel on the floor, he was going to fling them all into a volcano.

Yet, for all the bitching and moaning, it was actually kinda nice. He hadn’t shared space since he and Rhodey were roomies back at MIT. Why share space when you can afford to buy literally all the space for just you? But it was lonely at the top… of the tower, so, while he’d never admit it to anyone, he was grateful when the team migrated up. After two months, they were all sharing.

And not just the penthouse, they shared  _ everything. _

Clothes were passed around like a blunt at a music festival, food was a goddam freeforall, Tony wasn’t entirely sure he was the only one using his toothbrush, and more than once he had staggered up from the workshop to find someone sleeping in his bed.

All you could do, really, was hope it wasn’t Thor because good god, that man could snore.

So they took turns cooking, on an entirely unstructured rotation that meant Bruce cooked unless someone else volunteered, and that someone was not allowed to be Tony no thanks, we already have enough charcoal in our diets. And Tony paid for astonishingly discrete, astonishingly expensive cleaners to come. They abandoned possessiveness and they abandoned privacy. And it worked.

There were two problems, one of which was only a problem depending how you looked at it, and the other wasn’t a problem, so much as a mystery. The mystery was that Steve, who was the nicest most generous person in the galaxy and would give you the overly tight shirt off his back - and had done so more than once for Bruce after a surprise Hulking - got weird about one thing: food.

Steve bought his own food, and he hoarded it. He didn’t care that Tony was so rich he could easily fill the swimming pool and Scrooge McDuck it into a pile of gold bullion; Steve always bought his own. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch his, and in return, he touched nothing of anyone else’s. Sure, if you invited him to have dinner with you, made food, offered him a plate, he’d eat and be grateful - so grateful - but you’d never catch him on the couch with grimy, archer hands in a box of your frosted flakes, or find the tin foil from your last leftovers-swan suspiciously in his room. And once food was on his plate, it was  _ his  _ plate, and there would be no swiping a fry or tasting his soup, or you might lose a hand.

Everyone noticed, no one cared - except Tony. And the reason he cared was probably the first problem: Tony was mad, hard, gone, in love with Steve Rogers. And nobody knew.

Some days it was a problem. Some days, Steve was draped all sexy and tantalizing, shirt vacu-sealed on, over Tony’s couch with a pencil in his teeth, squinting at a  _ newspaper crossword _ like Primitive Man, and Tony had to take several cold showers in a row. Some days, Steve and Tony went to the Children’s Hospital for PR shit and Steve would legitimately read stories to children on a tiny plastic chair painted like a zebra, and Tony had to breathe deeply to calm the ovaries he’d suddenly sprouted out of nowhere. Some days it was fucking torture.

Some days it was the opposite of a problem. Some days, he’d look over his bowl of frosted flakes that only vaguely tasted like bow grease, and Steve would be there with his stupid perfect smile and his stupid perfect biceps, eating Raisin Bran that had “SR” scribbled on the side of the box so everyone would know it was his, and Tony would do that heart swelling, music rising bullshit in his chest. And even though that was kind of awful, in a way, it also really wasn’t. Cause he got to live with him, and save the world with him, and eat cereal with him, and so, in some ways, Steve was kind of his.

Steve’s food, on the other hand, paws fucking off.

Really, if you thought about it, it was inevitable that those two things would collide. Because Tony could weasel and charm and flutter his eyelashes with the best of them, but that only worked on strangers. Picking up a girl in a bar, he could do, but picking up the dude who occasionally wore Tony’s socks by accident was just too _personal._ Steve knew Tony. He knew he was an asshole, smart-mouthed, insecure alcoholic and who would want to fuck that? Let alone put a ring on that and ride off into the sunset with a cartload of rather surprised, miniature abductees from a certain hospital.

It was inevitable then, that Tony’s romantically inept brain would revert to preschool and decide that “like boy” = “bother boy for attention,” and “boy is weird about food” = “push that button til it breaks.” So he pushed it. A lot.

“Hey, Steve? Can I have some of your cereal?”

Steve’s brow furrowed. He looked up from his tablet to frown at Tony. “There’s Raisin Bran in the group cupboard, Tony. I can get it for you?”

“Nah, I just wanted some of yours.”

Steve pulled the box closer to himself, still frowning.

It got worse.

“That’s Steve’s,” Bruce pointed out, as Tony grabbed the bag of apples.

“I know.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Tony carefully moved the apples from the cupboard on the far right of the kitchen, to the far left. Later, he watched as Steve opened the cupboard, frowned, moved to the next cupboard, frowned, and repeated the process all the way through Tony’s expansive kitchen until he found the apples. He didn’t say anything, but he shot a few looks Tony’s way. Tony dropped his eyes to his tablet and tried to look very Busy and Important.

After the fourth or fifth time Tony moved something, Steve started storing his food in his room instead. It was a massive room, with a small kitchenette, and Steve had no trouble keeping everything of his in the fridge there. Tony left him alone for about a week before the lack of attention made him antsy. He knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn’t help pulling the thread again. He waited until Steve was out of the tower, meeting with SHIELD, then he went in his room and took it all. He went through the whole kitchenette, and all Steve’s drawers and cupboards, Grinch-style, and took every scrap of food. He hid it in an empty bedroom no one had claimed, and he waited, keyed up, for Steve to discover his prank.

Steve came home, waved hello, and disappeared into his room. A minute later, there was a thump and a cut off swear word and then, “Tony!”

Tony swallowed hard at the unexpected venom in his tone. Whoops. That might have been one too far. He slunk into Steve’s room, tail between his legs. Steve exploded.

“What is your problem?!” Steve spun to face him, and Tony could see the barely contained rage behind Steve’s eyes.

“It was just a joke,” he mumbled out.

“Well, it’s not a funny one! Jesus, why can’t you leave my shit alone? I don’t steal your stuff.”

“I didn’t steal it,” Tony protested. “I just moved it to the empty room next door. You’re such a weirdo about food. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me!”

“Just let it go!”

“I’ve never had food before, okay?!” Steve snapped. Tony fell silent. Steve took a deep breath but anger still quaked through every word as he spoke. “I grew up dirt poor in a time when a lot of people didn’t have enough to eat, not that you’d understand that in the slightest. Then I joined the army, where there was food, but everything was controlled, and no one understood that a super-soldier had to eat four times the amount a normal man his size would have to. I was hungry for  _ years.  _ Then I woke up at SHIELD, and there’s food, sure, and I’m allowed more of it, but it’s all at a mess hall where you just take what they give you, no choice. It was months before I had any money of my own to buy what I might want. Then I move here, and for the first time in my life I have money, and a fridge, and the grocery store has  _ everything,  _ and if it doesn't you can order it online. And finally,  _ finally,  _ I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, and I know what I have, and if I want it I can go home and it’ll just be there instead of some vicious, teasing craving I can’t satisfy. I know it’s stupid, and I know it’s selfish not to share, but I’d gladly buy everyone in this tower four boxes of Raisin Bran  _ each  _ just to know that my box is still full, and where I left it, at the end of the day!”

Steve huffed out a frustrated noise at the end of his monologue, glaring at the empty cupboards, and Tony stood there in shocked silence. When he found his voice he stammered out, “I’m sorry, I didn’t - “

Steve held up a hand, cutting him off. “I can’t deal with this right now. Get out. I’m -  this was a bad idea. I can’t deal with all this - this - you. I’m moving back downstairs.”

And he did. One minute they were all happily sharing, like the world’s weirdest Brady Bunch, and the next, there was a big hole in the penthouse in the shape of a sexy dorito in Under Armour, and it was Tony’s fault, and everyone knew it. Perfect retribution, really. He finally had what he wanted right under his nose, so he poked it until he left him like everyone else. Tony took exactly four days to wallow in abandonment issues and whiskey and back-to-back episodes of Sixteen and Pregnant, and then he decided to ball up and fix it. Except he had no idea how to fix it.

“Hey, Thor, what should I do?”

“About Steve?” Thor looked up from his book. “I guess, you apologize for whatever it was you did that hurt him so.”

“Thanks, buddy.” He had tried to apologize at the time, and it hadn’t really gone so well. It was the obvious solution, though. If he could manage it.

“Nat, darling, tell me how to fix things with Steve.”

Natasha considered him for a moment. “Do something nice for him. Show him you care.”

Do something nice. Something Steve liked. That was worth a ponder. Maybe he could buy him a boat. People liked boats, right? Steve might not like a boat.

He tried Bruce next, down in his lab. “What should I do?”

“About what?” Bruce opened the centrifuge and frowned, pinching the bridge of his nose under his safety glasses.

“About Steve.”

“Well, what happened? You messed with his food, right? Pulled a prank or something? Just replace whatever you ate, stole, broke, or blew up, and I’m sure he’ll forgive you, Tony. He likes you a lot, I think it’s just a touchy subject.”

“Right. Okay.”

Yeah, no fucking kidding it was a touchy subject. It was a “light blue touchpaper and retire to safe distance” level of touchy so what had Tony done? Chucked napalm at it. He wasn’t sure a replacement box of Oreos was quite going to cut it.

He hit the range as a last ditch effort.

“Hey, Clint? What should I do?”

“Fuck off, probably,” Clint offered, bringing his bow up to the side of his face and pulling the string back.

“Do you even know what I’m asking you about?”

“I never have a clue what you’re asking me about.” He fired a perfect shot directly into the bullseye.

“Fair enough.” Tony fucked off back to his room.

Really, Clint’s advice sounded the most appealing. Though if you discounted the booze and reality TV, that was basically what Tony had been doing for the past four days, and Steve’s room in the penthouse was still empty. He knew. He checked. A lot.

Apologize. Do something nice. Replace what you took.  ~~ Fuck off. ~~

He thought about it. What he’d taken hadn’t been the food, not really. He wasn’t so much of an idiot that he didn’t understand what this was about. Steve had a weakness, a vulnerability he wasn’t proud of, and Tony had poked it and poked it until Steve had been forced to face it, forced to talk about it. He’d taken Steve’s dignity, and that wasn’t something that was easily replaced.

But, at the very least, he could take it as well as he dished it out and suffer a little humiliating admission of his own, if Steve would let him.

It took him the rest of the morning to prepare, including bribing everyone to find themselves elsewhere for the rest of the night, and then a solid portion of the afternoon to pace about in gut-clenching panic about actually going through with what he’d planned. Then a whole hour on top of that to work up the courage to text Steve and ask him to meet tonight. After all the preparing and panicking and not-texting, six-o’clock approached astonishingly fast, and Tony wasn’t quite sure he’d had enough time to panic properly before there was a knock on the penthouse door.

He wrenched it open, willing the anxiety to settle in his hands or knees or left ear, or something - anything to keep it out of his mouth. “You don’t have to knock, Steve.” Good start, Stark. Good fucking start, tell him off for being polite, A+.

Steve frowned. “I don’t live here anymore.”

“I know, sorry. I just meant. You’re welcome anytime. You don’t have to wait… for me to let you in. You can just. Yeah. Anyway. Thanks for coming.” Tony stepped back, and Steve shuffled into the apartment.

“You wanted to talk to me.”

Step One: Do something nice.

“Yeah, I do. But uh, there’s dinner, if you’re hungry.” He gestured vaguely towards the table where things were set up.

Steve sniffed the air appreciatively, but he was still frowning. Still, he approached the table and looked over the spread. He raised a skeptical eyebrow at Tony. “You cooked?”

“Oh fuck no. I’ve tried doing apology cooking and it really does not go well for me. It’s almost guaranteed to make things worse. This is ordered in. I thought you maybe wouldn’t have tried Thai food before. So. Yeah. That’s what I got.”

“Apology cooking?”

They were rushing through the steps a little faster than expected. He was hoping to already be two glasses of Riesling in before they moved on to the next thing, but what could you do?

Step Two: Apologize.

“Yes. Apology cooking. Because I owe you one. An apology, not a cooking. And I am. Sorry, that is. I’m sorry.” He took a breath. “I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean to push on the food thing - I mean I did mean to push on it, but it was an asshole thing to do, and I shouldn’t have. And I’m really sorry and sad that you left the penthouse, and everyone is mad at me, and they all miss you and I wish I could just… take it all back.”

Steve eyed him for a moment before speaking. “You’re sorry because everyone is mad at you?”

“No! Well, I mean that’s part of it. I’m sorry I fucked things up for them too, because they liked having you live here. But no, I’m mostly sorry for me because  _ I  _ liked having you live here and it’s awful knowing you’re downstairs but I can’t talk to you and we don’t eat our cereal together anymore and I went to the hospital without you today and there was no one to sit in the zebra chair and it was just really empty and I hate it…” Tony sent urgent signals to his mouth to bring it in for a landing any minute now cause he was getting awfully close to step three and it wasn’t time yet. They hadn’t eaten and most importantly no one was drinking, and that lump of titanium that had gone missing from the lab had been found in the bottom of Tony’s stomach, having a rave with all its heavy metal friends.

Steve poked at the dishes Tony had laid out. “I got you pad thai,” Tony explained as Steve lifted the lid off his plate. Steve checked out the plate set at Tony’s seat. “That’s my green curry. Uh, Steve?”

Steve heaved a sigh and the tension floated out his shoulders. “Okay. I get it. I mean, I know you weren’t trying to piss me off. Or you were, but not the way you did. You were just playing around. There was no way you could know it was, uh, a  _ thing  _ for me. So, okay. Apology accepted.” Steve shifted from foot to foot and his eyes dropped to the carpet. “I’m not always good at this social stuff, living in a pack. It’s amazing, and mind-blowing, and it feels a lot like having a family, but it’s overwhelming sometimes too and I think I just needed a break and I didn’t know how to say it. So, I’m sorry too, I overreacted. It wasn’t entirely your fault. I’ll move back up. I’ve missed everyone too.”

Tony opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish who had absolutely no idea what to say. Steve just forgave him? Like that? What?

“This looks amazing, Tony. You’re right, I’ve never had Thai food. Thank you.” Steve sat down at his place and gazed up at Tony with those stupid perfect eyes. Tony sat too and picked up his napkin, twirling it in his fingers. They would eat and Tony would drink - heavily - and then he’d bust out step three followed by hustling out of there like the frightened little squirrel he was. Then they’d be fair and square and hopefully, neither of them would ever have to speak about either thing ever again. 

And then he ruined everything.

Step Three: Replace what you took, just tumbled out his traitorous mouth in a torrent of mangled words.

“I have a thing,” he blurted out, halting Steve as he reached for his food. Steve lifted his head and stared at him, clearly waiting. “I have a thing, you know, for your thing. You told me something that was hard for you to say, even though you didn’t want to, and I can’t really give you that back, but I can give you one of mine. One of my embarrassing things. In return. As apology.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have to do that. I forgive you.”

“I do though. I should. I mean, it’s fair, right? I won’t feel right unless I do.”

“Okay.” Steve set his fork back down and waited.

“Okay. Well, it’s silly and uh, yeah, really embarrassing so I’ll just - “ Tony knocked back a sizeable gulp of the wine he should have had quite a lot of before Steve even showed up. “Ihaveacrushonyou. There. It’s awkward and very fourth grade, complete with writing Mrs. Stark-Rogers all over my notebooks and watching you bend over every time you pick up the shield. It’s very sad and very silly and I’m disgustingly professional about it, but there ya go. Fair's fair. Mock, if you like. Get it out of your system. And then we can move on and forget all about this for the rest of forever. Thank you.” Tony tossed back the rest of his wine, choked, coughed, then poured another glass, all without looking at Steve.

When he finally braved a glance over, Steve was looking down. At first, Tony was sure he was mad, holding back the urge to sock Tony right in the jaw, which he hadn’t really considered as a possibility but now he really, really was, and it did not sound pleasant. Steve was from the 40s, maybe a dude having a crush on him was sock worthy. He tensed. But when he really looked, he saw. Steve wasn’t mad, he wasn’t holding back a jaw-socking, he was holding back a smile.

His eyes were cast down, at his lap, or at his plate and he was smiling, small and tentative, but there. This was not on the list of possible reactions Tony had made earlier. The options were 1) laugh, 2) mock 3) joke. He hadn’t thought of jaw-socking, and he hadn’t thought of tiny, adorable smiles, and honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t prefer the sock since at least he knew what that meant.

“What the fuck?” he squeaked out. And Steve’s eyes lifted, and caught his, and his smile widened. Tony’s heart gave a valiant attempt at expanding rapidly in his chest like a pufferfish, which left little room for his lungs. 

Steve pushed his chair back with a horrific screech and walked slowly around the table to where Tony sat. Tony couldn’t tear his eyes away, panic and confusion playing a vigorous round of ping pong with all his internal organs. “Steve?” he tried. 

Steve reached down and dipped his spoon into Tony’s green curry, drawing the mouthful of spiced bamboo, chicken, and creamy coconut sauce to his lips. Tony watched as the spoon disappeared inside his mouth and reappeared empty. 

“Hey, that’s my curry,” Tony said, voice barely more than a scratchy whisper. 

Steve cocked an eyebrow. He was still  _ smiling.  _ “Oh yeah? You wanna taste it?” he asked, smirky, and cocky, and challenging and -  _ holy shit.  _ Steve’s hand curled around the back of Tony’s neck and urged him up. Tony stumbled to his feet. He knew he must look like a cartoon character at this point, but his eyes just kept getting wider, as if, with enough peripheral vision, he might be able to see the punchline to this insane joke.

“It’s good,” Steve whispered, suddenly,  _ wow, _ right there, with his hand around Tony’s neck, doing the smiley, hand-neck, whispering, draw-you-in-for-a-kiss, sultry thing. “Spicy.”

_ Holy shit.  _ “Holy shit. Holy shit, holy sh -” 

It _ was  _ spicy. And warm, and sweet too. Tony licked past Steve’s parted lips to chase the chili and lime and cilantro on his tongue. Steve pushed forward, wrapping his arms around Tony’s waist and drawing him in, kissing him breathless and stupid and perfect.

When they pulled apart, Tony ran a full reboot sequence on his brain. Then a hard drive defrag and virus scan while he was at it, because all your dreams coming true all at once could be the absolute best day of your life, or it could be a faulty partition, and it always paid to check. He pinched Steve.

“I think you’re supposed to pinch yourself,” Steve informed him.

“But that would hurt.”

Steve grinned and kissed him again. “Is this okay?”

“Is this okay? Is this  _ okay?!” _   Tony ran his hands over Steve’s chest, sighing when he finally got to feel that smooth plane of muscle under his palms. “I have no goddamn idea if this is  _ okay,  _ I’m still stuck on  _ is this real?!”  _

Steve pulled him a little closer and Tony melted into his warm, firm, glorious body. “It’s real. I feel that way too. With the crush, and the Mrs. Rogers-Stark and the, um, bending over.” Steve let out a shaky, coriander-scented breath. “I know that’s not what you were expecting, when you told me that, but uh, if you want to. I’d love to…” Steve trailed off, apparently not sure how to articulate what he’d love, but Tony and his spluttering heart, and his spasming lungs, and certain other interested parts of him were articulating it very well.

“Yes. I do. God, desperately. All the things. Let’s break into the hospital right now and just clear the place out, cause god knows I won’t be able to pick just one.” Steve grinned indulgently, obviously having no idea what Tony was talking about, but probably used to that by now. And liking him anyway. Steve liked him back. “Oh fuck, I’m going to end up swooning or something. Do something not perfect.”

Steve smiled and that was perfect so Tony glared back. 

“So, I can move back upstairs?” Steve asked, pulling his bottom lip in between his teeth and worrying it.

“Are you kidding?” Tony threw his arm wide to gesture at the penthouse all around them, then decided immediately that gesturing - regardless of how well it emphasized his point - was not a good idea if it meant he had to stop touching Steve. “You’re moving back up here immediately. Everyone else is moving back downstairs!”

Steve laughed and took Tony’s hand in his face. He brushed his thumb over Tony’s cheek and, Tony started mentally moving money around so he could buy Steve a boat, or an island, or a continent. Maybe a planet. Something nice as a thank-you-for-liking-me-back-you-insane-man gift. “Stop buying things in your head, Tony. And don’t kick the team out, they’re happy here. I want us all together again, please?”

“Yeah okay. I guess it’s alright. Though I would like to point out that while it took a literal god to manage it, we have thwarted my hot water heater on more than one occasion and I do not like a cold shower. Though I have needed one frequently when you wore that one shirt with the blue and the thing. The tight thing.”

Steve’s lip twitched up and his eyes dropped to Tony’s mouth. “How about - ” his voice had dropped low. Tony swallowed. “How about, you let everyone live here, and you and I can find some ways to save hot water to make up for it?”

Tony nodded. A lot. Rapidly. The room got a bit spinny. He stopped nodding. “Yes.”

“Good.” Steve brought their lips together again. The curry had faded, leaving only the taste of Steve in its wake. Warm too, and intoxicating in its own way. “So? What do you want to do now?”

Tony looked around, bewildered that this had somehow become his life in the span of twenty minutes. He smiled. “Well. I’d say green curry was a hit, but there are still several other dishes I think you might like. Wanna try?”

Steve grinned, nodded. “Wanna share?”  
  



End file.
